In his address to political leaders from Nyanza at State House last week, President Uhuru Kenyatta reiterated that his desire and that of his brother – ODM leader Raila Odinga – was to leave behind a country where all citizens are proud to be Kenyans.
However, if recent developments are anything to go by, this might remain the wishful thinking of a Teflon politician.
Shortly after being sworn-in for a second term, President Uhuru unveiled an ambitious economic plan dubbed the Big Four Agenda on which his legacy would be founded. The blueprint prioritised manufacturing, affordable housing, food security and universal health care.
The Big Four Agenda, a revolutionary plan by a government that had severely underperformed in its first term, was launched in a murky political moment. The shambolic August 8, 2017 presidential elections had plunged the country into a deep political crisis that inspired grave conversations including cessation by disgruntled regions.
A political compromise was necessary for the realisation of the Big Four. That is how State House operatives read the March 9, 2018 handshake between the President and his hitherto political nemesis Raila.
If there was more to it, politically, we may have to wait longer. Meanwhile, an examination of the state of President Uhuru’s legacy, about which he has developed sudden obsession during his second term, is instructive.
Let’s start with the Big Four. Little manufacturing is taking place in Kenya. The county still imports basic commodities like mugs and doormats. Although the government had made commendable strides in the manufacturing sector, those gains have been halted by the pandemic.
We have to remember that Kenya wasn’t doing well economically even before Covid-19. Most businesses were already going under, commodity prices were rising and most low-income families were unsure of where the next meal would come from.
The global financial crunch caused by Covid-19 containment measures rocked the Kenyan economy further. If there was some form of delusion on the side of the government that Kenya was food-secure, or approaching that stage, the high numbers of people in need of food recorded during lockdown exposed such thoughts as fertile imagination.
The universal health care project collapsed even before it was rolled out. Those in charge of the exercise said lack of funds was the main impediment. Access to sustainable healthcare is still a major problem in Kenya. With public health facilities – understaffed and frequently neglected – stretched to capacity thanks to the pandemic, most Kenyans are starved of basic health care and are unable to afford private hospitals.
The cost of housing in Kenya is equally heart-stopping. Many people, in Nairobi for example, still struggle to pay rent – seen by housing experts as uneconomical and exploitative. In short, the Big Four Agenda, originally the inspiration behind President Uhuru’s legacy, has largely not been implemented.
If President Uhuru and Raila by burying the hatchet, primarily intended to unite Kenyans through the Building Bridges Initiative that dream is now, in the words of the High Court, unconstitutional, null and void.
In other words, the handshake, perhaps for the simple reason that it was conceived by scions of Kenya's elite, hasn’t united Kenyans. If anything, it has expanded the fissures even more.
Even if BBI was solely about uniting Kenyans, as its proponents initially tried to package it, the way it was sold to the people betrayed what good results might have come out of it. It is therefore futile for President Uhuru to talk about uniting Kenyans through a legally flawed process as part of his legacy.
As former Czech President and playwright, Vaclav Havel noted, even a purely moral – and BBI isn’t one – act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain political significance.
We are going into the 2022 General Elections at the soundtracks of what is essentially class struggle. We may find conventional ways of vindicating Deputy President William Ruto’s hustler-nation narrative for instance, but deep down we know that it borders on class war. How? It puts the proletariat in a contest with the bourgeoisie as a matter of collective consciousness.
If compelled by the force of circumstances to organise itself, the proletariat automatically becomes the ruling class through a communist revolution. But, when the proletariat, as is currently the case in Kenya, doesn’t share the same view on who’s exactly responsible for its situation, the society is pushed to the edge of an abyss.
John Ouma is a FirstGen Scholar and has been accepted to study journalism at Biola University in the United States
